


And I Feel Fine

by eternaleponine



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:38:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: The multiverse is collapsing and this time there might not be an answer.  What do you do when it's the end of the world as you know it?
Sequel to In Loving Memory.





	And I Feel Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ComeAlongDoctor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComeAlongDoctor/gifts).



The world was ending. 

The world was always ending, or at least it seemed like it, but this time it looked like even the Big BrainsTM might not be able to come up with a solution in time to save it, and this time it wasn't just one world but _all_ the worlds, so when the end came, America wouldn't just be able to stomp her way out of it.

There was nothing that she could do to stop it, either, or if there was, no one had contacted her to tell her. She hated feeling useless. She hated feeling out of control. She hated when she was faced with a problem that she couldn't just punch in the face. 

Problems like the feeling you get when the world is ending, maybe in a few hours or maybe in a few days, but a week is almost certainly too much to hope for, and you want to go home but home isn't a place, and you're actually not even sure _what_ home is, or where, or who...

... or you do know, but you aren't quite ready to face it, because you're not sure that reopening a door that you'd thought you'd closed a lifetime (or a year) ago is the best thing to do when you don't know what's waiting on the other side, and maybe there's nothing waiting at all, and even if there is something (some _one_ ) waiting there's no time...

She found herself in front of a building that she thought she was steering herself away from and her eyes scanned the names on the mailboxes. She swallowed hard when she found the one that she'd been looking for and reached for the buzzer... then stopped herself. A buzzer could be ignored. A buzzer might not even be heard. For all she knew it was broken. 

She took a breath and raised her foot, and found herself on the fifth floor in front of a door that she'd been asked to walk through so that she didn't ruin the illusion that she might still be just around the corner. She raised her hand and knocked before she could lose her nerve.

At first there was no sound on the other side, and sure, it had occurred to her that there might not be anyone home, that maybe she'd moved on if not actually moved out. She could be out on a mission, but this was a job for someone far more powerful than either of them, than their whole team combined, really, if you could even still call them that, considering how long it had been.

She knocked again, just in case, and heard footsteps on the other side of the door, and then a voice that it had been far too long since she'd heard. "Who's there?"

"Is that any way to greet an old friend, Princess?"

"America?" The chain rattled and then the door jerked opened, and there was Kate, beautiful as ever even with something smudged on her cheek that looked like it might be chocolate. "What are you...?"

"Can I come in?"

"Yes, sure, of course." Kate stepped aside and let her past, then closed and locked the door behind her. "I... if I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake," she said, the corners of her mouth quirking up so that America knew it was some kind of joke, a reference that she was missing. "We'll just have to make do with brownies."

"I didn't—" America stopped herself. She'd been about to say that she didn't come here for cake or brownies, but the truth was that she wasn't actually sure _why_ she'd come here, why out of all of the people in all of the worlds, it was Kate she couldn't get out of her head as the walls between the worlds came tumbling down. "Brownies sound good."

"It'll be a while," Kate said. "I just put them in the oven."

"I don't have anywhere else to be," America said. 

Kate looked at her, really looked, and now her smile was softer, not quite pity but definitely understanding. "I hate it too," she said. "We should be out there _doing_ something."

"I've been assured that they'll let me know immediately if there's anything that calls for my particular skill set," America said. "I'm pretty sure that was their polite way of telling me to go outside and play and let the adults work." 

"At least there might be something that you can do, once they get things figured out," Kate said. "I'm pretty sure that there is no trick arrow that will stop, or even slow down, the collapse of the multiverse."

"You never know," America said, but they both _did_ know that Kate was probably right. She was also right that it felt shitty to just sit around, unable to do anything, to be just like everyone else (except everyone else didn't know, because what good would it do to cause mass hysteria?) instead of one of the ones who stopped this kind of thing from happening, time after time after time.

America shoved her hands in her pockets to keep her from crossing her arms over her chest, because the latter gesture would have made her look standoffish, but then the former made her look uncertain, so really there was no winning. "I'm sorry I haven't kept in touch," she said. 

"It's okay," Kate replied, probably more because she didn't want to have this conversation than because it really was okay. After the Young Avengers had more or less disbanded, they'd all gone their separate ways, to live their separate lives. They saw each other occasionally, but they'd each found their own niche in the super-world, and they'd drifted apart. 

Not that America had ever really been part of the buddy-buddy Young Avengers family, because she had come in later, but that didn't mean that she didn't miss it sometimes. 

Or maybe not 'it'. Maybe not the team. 

Maybe what she missed was standing right in front of her, patiently waiting for an explanation. She got the feeling that if Kate had known that she wasn't here to recruit her for a mission, she might not have let her in the door. 

"Times like these, it gets you thinking," America said awkwardly. "If these really are our last days, if this really is the end... you know?"

"I know," Kate said. "It's like one of those 'deep thought' questions people like to whip out late at night when everyone has had a little too much to drink, and they all end up saying how they're going to tell everyone close to them how much they love them, and how they're going to quit their job and do that one impossible thing on their bucket list and blah, blah, blah."

"Except it's never real," America said.

"Until it is."

"Exactly." She bit her lip. "There's still a chance," she said.

"I know," Kate said.

"But if this really is the end..." She pulled her hands from her pockets and crossed them after all, because she just felt too vulnerable, too exposed, without something to stand between her and the rest of the world (which was comprised of one person right now, one single, solitary person who she had maybe accidentally given a little more of herself to than she'd meant to last time she was here) or maybe to try and keep what she was feeling in, lest it come spilling out and make things messy. 

They didn't have time for messy.

"Is this some kind of apocalyptic booty call?" Kate asked, taking a step closer.

America couldn't tell from her tone, or her face, whether she was amused or annoyed. It was almost impossible to keep her own expression from twisting into something that would give far too much away. "Do you want it to be?"

Another step. "Why are you here, America?"

"Because I kept thinking that if this was the end, and I only had time to do one last thing, what would I most regret not doing? And that's you." She closed her eyes, shook her head with a rueful laugh, opened them again. "I would say that came out wrong but it would only be half true."

She saw Kate's mouth twitch as she fought a smile. "At least you're honest," she said. "What if I said that I have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?"

"Then I'd say that they're lucky, and I hope they know how lucky they are," America said, swallowing back the sour taste that rose in the back of her throat, the taste of jealousy and disappointment. "And maybe I'd ask if it was still okay for me to stay for brownies." 

"Do you?" Kate asked. "Have anyone?"

"I wouldn't be here if I did," America said. "There was a girl... it didn't work out. When things got bad, or when we realized just how bad they were, I just... couldn't do it anymore. She knew about me, but... there's still so much I couldn't say. It was too much. She was understanding when I told her that I needed to focus on the whole hero gig, which just made me feel even shittier."

"So you decided I could be your rebound?"

"I decided that it's the end of the world as we know it, and I didn't want to face it alone," America said. "I decided that I could use a friend, and believe it or not, I don't have too many." She let her hands drop. "If I got it wrong, just tell me and I'll go." 

Kate shook her head. "No. No, you didn't get it wrong." She sighed, her shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry. It's just... it's been a long fucking year. A long, hard year and mostly I've been dealing with it on my own and now here you are and I look at you and I remember. I remember the last time I felt... _good_. Just purely good, and alive, and... not alone."

"Exactly."

"That's why you're here?"

"That's why I'm here."

"Then why didn't you just say that?" Kate asked.

"Because I've always been such a master wordsmith," America said, rolling her eyes.

"You could have said it without saying a word," Kate told her, "and you know it."

America looked at her, looked at the challenge in her eyes but also past that to the loneliness and the uncertainty and the anger and the desire and she closed the space between them and reached up, wrapping one hand around the back of Kate's neck, and she pulled her in and kissed her hard, and for a few seconds it was all lips mashed into teeth and clashing tongues until they remembered not how to kiss, but how to kiss _each other_ , and then it was good, better, the best kiss that America had had in a long time because there was nothing that had to remain unsaid between them. 

Except.

She pulled away. "You don't, do you?"

Kate blinked. "Don't what?"

"Have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend."

"No," Kate said. "I don't know why I said that."

"Okay," America said. "Good." 

"Would it matter?" Kate asked. "The world's ending. There might not be any consequences."

"Of course it would matter," America said, frowning. "I'm not—that's not who I am, and that's not who _you_ are, either, unless you've changed a whole hell of a lot more than I ever thought you would." 

"I've changed," Kate said, "but not that much." 

"Good," America told her, "because I liked who you were."

"And now?"

"Now I'm still getting to know you again." 

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Kate asked, and America could see where her cheek dented in as she bit it, trying not to laugh. 

"You've been spending too much time with that other Hawkeye," America said. "He's making you old before your time."

Something flickered in Kate's eyes, and America wished she could take the words back, wished she could rewind the last few seconds, or minutes... or months, maybe, going all the way back to last year when they'd parted ways. 

But it was impossible, or nearly so (she knew people who knew people, after all) and anyway, she wasn't one for rewriting the past. It was better to move forward, live in the now because now was all they had, and maybe not too much of it left. 

"If this is our last night on earth, or any world..." she said. 

"Then I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend it with," Kate said. Which she might just be saying because America was the one who was _there_ , but just like she didn't like to dwell on the past, America was equally averse to 'what if's and 'if only's, and anyway it was hard to argue when someone else's mouth was against your mouth, sucking the words from your lips and tongue before they could form themselves, short-circuiting your brain and scrambling your thoughts until all you were was sensation wrapped in skin, and all you wanted was _more_.

One hand was tangled in the hair at the nape of Kate's neck, and the other crumpled the material of her shirt at the small of her back, damp with sweat in the suddenly too-warm apartment. America forced her fingers to relax, gliding her palm over Kate's side and hip to her belly, and then down, and down, under the waistband of the purple flannel pants she wore and the (probably also purple) panties underneath, down through the thatch of dark curls, the tip of her middle finger so gently parting her lips and sinking into the wet heat of her, deep and then deeper, the angle not ideal but Kate's moan exquisite as she rose up on her toes a little. 

America slid her hand back a little, circling her clit slowly, gently, a just barely there touch until Kate arched, grinding her hips into it. She felt teeth against her neck, and the hot pant of Kate's breath as she moved her fingers between her legs, coaxing increasingly urgent sounds from her as her knees weakened and she clung harder to America, fighting to keep her balance, and America could have taken her to the couch, or to the bed, laid her down and finished her there, but she liked this, liked taking her weight, liked feeling strong and in control, liked the fact that she could make Kate so thoroughly lose it.

And she did lose it. Her hips bucked and for a second she wasn't breathing, and then she was, a ragged gasp that turned into a shuddering sigh, her lips against America's skin and they were clinging to each other and America realized her eyes were stinging and she was glad that Kate didn't have the energy to even lift her head so she wouldn't see. 

She slid her hand back out of Kate's pants and wrapped her arms around her, letting her hands drop to hook under her thighs. She heard Kate's intake of breath as she lifted her, carried her to the bedroom and then leaned over her as she lowered her to the bed, tracing a path of kisses down her throat even as she worked her pants and panties down her hips and off. 

"What...?" Kate asked, but the question didn't even make it all the way past her lips before America stopped them with a kiss, pulling her up just enough so that she could work her tanktop up her ribs and off as the kiss broke. 

And there she was, completely naked, completely exposed, and America just drank in the sight, looking down in awe at the smooth paleness of her skin, marked here and there with little scars, some of which had been there last time and some which hadn't, and she traced them with her fingertips and then her tongue, and she thought she heard Kate make some token sound of protest but it didn't last long as America's hands cupped her breasts, her thumbs rolling over her nipples until they came to points, and then she sucked first one, then the other into her mouth, back and forth with wet kisses over her shoulders and chest and ribs in between, and finally down her stomach, around her navel and down again. She dropped to her knees beside the bed between Kate's spread legs and breathed in the scent of her, felt Kate shift and glanced up to see her reaching for a pillow and shoving it under her head so that she could look down and see what was happening, and their eyes caught and held as she planted a kiss just _there_ , and flicked out her tongue.

It was easy. It was so easy to make Kate come, and come again, her fingers fisted in the sheets as her thighs writhed, clamping around America's ears at one point as her back arched and her hips bucked and America's mouth was filled with the taste of her, and for a few minutes her entire world was just this, and she was content to let everything else go.

Finally her legs went slack, her entire body limp, and she cracked open her eyes and crooked one finger because it was apparently all she could move. "C'mere."

America stood, her own legs shaking for no reason, and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over her. 

"Kiss me."

So she kissed her, and Kate's fingers closed gently around one wrist, her thumb stroking over the star. The kiss was soft and sweet and it made America's heart ache for reasons she didn't have it in her to examine right now, and over too soon.

"Take off your clothes," Kate said. "It's not fair."

* * *

She hadn't expected to ever see America again. At least not like this. Sure, they might have run into each other from time to time – the hero world was like that – and maybe they might even have ended up on the same team again at some point. But after that one night, when she'd watched America walk out her door not knowing what she was feeling about it, she had never expected that she would turn back up at that same door, looking for... what? 

Because this wasn't just about sex. Kate had no doubt that America could get that from just about any girl that she wanted, if she put her mind to it. She put up a façade of gruffness, but it wasn't all that hard to crack if she wanted to let you. So it wasn't just that. 

She'd said she was here because she would regret it if the world ended without her having... what? Made amends? There was nothing to apologize for. She said she didn't want to be alone, and Kate got that, but it still didn't really answer why _her_.

Maybe she was just looking for something familiar... but it wasn't like they were some old habit that was hard to break. It had happened _once_ and Kate had wondered afterwards if maybe America even regretted it a little (she never had – it had opened the door to a part of herself that she'd never really realized was there). But now she was here, at the possible end of all the worlds, throwing herself at Kate but not because she wanted to be given pleasure, but because she wanted to give it, or at least that's how it had gone so far. 

Not that Kate intended to let it stay that way. That wasn't how she worked. Sure, there were moments when she was okay with being selfish, but it didn't feel right now. America was here for a reason, and it wasn't that she didn't want to take her at her word, but she just couldn't believe that that was really all of it, and if she could just get behind those walls she could crack her shell and see what was inside. 

"Take off your clothes," Kate said, reaching to shove the pillow farther up under her head and shoulders so that she could see America as she stood. "It's not fair." The last part was meant to be teasing, and she hoped that America understood. 

America looked at her, for a moment looking uncertain, but then something sparked warm in the depths of her dark eyes, and her lips curved, and slowly... so slowly... she began to peel away the layers that she wore, letting it all fall to the floor in a pile. Somehow she even managed to make it look sexy as she wriggled out of her sports bra, and that was nearly impossible. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her undershorts and began to slide them slowly down her hips, her eyes locked on Kate's as she did so.

"Wait," Kate said, trying not to squirm as her body reacted (more strongly than she could have imagined considering what it had just been through, but apparently her blood was still capable of rushing to the places where it thought it needed to be, and desire throbbed between her thighs. "Let me."

America's teasing smirk flickered into something a bit bigger, a bit brighter, and she held out her hands to pull Kate up. Kate took them, letting herself be tugged up into America's arms, shivering at the touch of skin against skin. "You are so beautiful," she whispered, because it was true and because she might never get another chance to say it. "So beautiful." 

She could feel the heat in America's cheeks as her lips brushed over them on their way from her ear to her lips, and they kissed again, and again, their lips parting and meeting over and over as they tried to take each other in with every sense all at once. Kate slid her hands under the elastic of America's waistband and pushed it down, her hands sliding over the curves of her hips, the globes of her ass as the material slipped down her thighs and away, and she moved then, stepping out of the pool of clothing at her feet and planting her knees on the edge of the mattress. 

Kate knew she only had a fraction of a moment where America would be off-balance as she adjusted to the less steady surface, and she took it, wrapping an arm around her waist and twisting quickly so that she toppled across the bed, with Kate on top of her.

America blinked in surprise, and then she laughed and twined her arms around Kate, pulling her down. "Well played, Princess," she said. 

"Not Princess," Kate said. "Not tonight."

"Not tonight," America said, sobering a little. "What do you want me to call you?"

"Kate," she said. "Just call me Kate." 

And America did, first in whispers and then in moans as Kate reminded herself of all of the things that she'd learned that first and only night, and that she had replayed in her head more than once (many times more than once) in the year since. She relearned the curves and contours of her body, the way that soft skin and taut muscle and hard bone came together to become one beautiful whole, and the way that that body responded with such alacrity to even the lightest of touches. 

But America didn't want Kate to be sweet and soft; that much very quickly became clear, and Kate understood. There was a time for tenderness, and a place for it... but not now, and not here. So she poured passion into her, all of the feelings that had been woken and stirred and then left to simmer coming to a boil as she kissed her all over, tongue tasting and teeth scraping sometimes, sucking at the curve of her neck and at her nipples, the points of which she rolled around with her tongue until the sounds America was making shifted from a moan to a groan to a growl, and even then she kept at it as she plunged two fingers deep into her, her thumb circling her clit as her hips bucked hard and she came with what felt like no effort at all.

Kate waited for it to pass, waited for her panting breaths to slow and her eyes to open, warm deep brown pools gone even more liquid as she looked at Kate. "Smugness isn't cute," she said. 

"I'm not trying to be cute," Kate told her, beginning to work her fingers between her legs again, slowly to let it build gradually this time, and America shifted slightly to kiss her, and now there was something else to it, something that hadn't been there before, or at least Kate hadn't noticed it before. America wasn't making demands anymore; she was asking for favors. She was asking Kate to give her what she could not find in herself. She had come seeking comfort, searching for sanity in a world gone mad. 

So Kate gave it to her, as best she could, with the press of skin against skin and cresting waves of pleasure that rocked them both and left America clinging as Kate murmured words she hoped wouldn't prove to be lies: "Shh, it's okay. We're okay. We're here."

Maybe not for longer, but it was true for now. They were here, and they were alive, and they were together and that felt right, both for the moment and maybe for a little longer.

They lay twined together, sweaty and still, breathing each other's breaths, and Kate didn't comment on the dampness of America's cheeks, just kissed it away and tasted salt on her lips, and America didn't say anything about how she'd started shaking, only pulled a blanket over them and wrapped her arms tighter until it stopped.

"Do you think this is really the end?" Kate asked. 

"I don't know," America said.

"Why did you come, really?"

America looked at her, then lowered her eyes as she rubbed the tip of her nose back and forth against Kate's. "I told you before," she said. "Because when I was taking stock of things, trying to figure out what I would, or should, do if this really was it... the only thing I could think of that I would regret would be not figuring out if maybe I'd walked away too soon."

"And?"

"And I hope it's not the end," America said. "Because I don't have it all figured out yet."

"No matter what happens," Kate said, "things aren't going to be the same."

"Different doesn't always mean worse," America pointed out.

"I know." _But it seems like most of the time it does._

"Can I stay?" America asked. Last time it had been Kate who'd asked. Last time she had been the one to ask America not to leave. 

Kate didn't know if she meant the night or until the end, and she didn't know whether the two might be one and the same. She decided she didn't care. "Yes."

"It's the end of the world as we know it," America said.

Kate kissed her, long and soft and full of promises they might not get the chance to keep. "And I feel fine."


End file.
